About Sara Greenberger Rafferty

Drawing inspiration from comedy and popular entertainment, Sara Greenberger Rafferty produces performances, videos, installations, mixed-media paintings, and manipulated photographs, through which she explores the violence, pathos, and vulnerability of the art of entertainment. Pies, microphones, knives, lights, and other props and theatrical elements are motifs in her work, referring to the mix of danger, absurdity, and failure that characterizes slapstick comedy and humor-based entertainment. In works like Mono (2014), included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, she filmed an actress mimicking Johnny Carson, David Letterman, and Joan Rivers, cutting these larger-than-life entertainers down to human scale to highlight their isolation and fragility in the face of the audience’s gaze.